WoW is the McDonald's of the MMO world, in my opinion, and has been preventing innovation in the mmo-genre.

Haven't played SWTOR, can't comment on it.

Granted, I stopped playing WoW after the first expansion and I only played SWTOR in beta. From that I would say that SWTOR had better story telling through better writing and voice acting, but the combat felt very dull and boring to me. In that sense I would put it as a sidegrade to WoW. Not better overall, but better at different things. And to throw in a bit of a derailing, from what I have seen over the GW2 beta weekends, it is better than WoW. I don't see it de-throning WoW, but I still think what it does is overall better.

I wouldn't call SWTOR a step up, more a step sideways. With the sole exception of presentation it does nothing better than WoW. Everything else is either the same - exactly the same -, or worse.

That said, from Cataclysm onward WoW has degenerated to the point where I can't envisage myself going back to it - the bastardisation of the levelling experience is just painful to experience. I can see myself revisiting TOR, a bit, but neither have ever been among my favourite MMOs.

No, it's just another nail in the coffin of theme park MMOs, hopefully TESO will be the last one. Still I'm thankful for TOR, since it hit EA where it hurts - their pockets and their dignity, solidifying them in the eyes of investors as the hapless Activision-Blizzard wannabes they are.

And, seriously, the poll would've been perfectly complete with just yes/no options.

Swtor is worse than WoW in my opinion. It does quite a few things worse, some things just as well, and only the main story line better.

Don't get me wrong, WoW isn't a good mmo any more by any stretch. It's the 'fast and easy' McDonalds style mmorpg that because of that, keeps a huge player base. And I'm really, really hoping that Gw2 will be able to draw me in so I can have a different 'causal play' mmorpg to focus on. But right now, swtor is definitely not better than wow.

TOR for sure, mostly by the virtue of two things.
A: Fucking star wars
B: Bioware story telling

Those two, combined with playing through two campaigns at a time with a friend, is really what sold TOR to me. Plus WoW's graphics are just absurd and broken at this state, you call it an art style, I call it dated.

Honestly, as far as mmos go, I'm more interested in things like Runes of Magic or the f2p browser games from Bigpoint. Drakensang Online, anyone? I can pick up and drop the games as I please without losing money on them (don't care about their end games and won't pay to see them). I'm curious to see what Zenimax does with Elder Scrolls Online, though.

I gave it to TOR but both winding down, I dont see why WOW is that much better at all anymore, story is going way of the deep end in wow. Power in characters is getting ridiculous. At some point it has to end.

ToR is just more of the same though I loved huttball, wish more games had pvp like that. Still funny to me how people were saying ToR had no endgame content yet they added an entire new raid and pvp area, yet in the same timeframe from oct - now wow has had 0 new content

This is how I judge it, when I played WoW I played for like a week got my guy to fifteen got bored then quit when the 15 day Free Trial ran out. With SWTOR I played for two entire subscriptions enjoyed myself immensely and got one character to 48 and another to 35 IIRC. I guess that's why I believe SWTOR is better.

the thing about making binary judgements on mmos is they are never a fixed product.

SWTOR launched too early due to business pressures and suffered a undue slating at the hands of WoW indoctrinated gamers specifically because it was truly the first real threat/competitor to come along however it has continually improved since launch and shown a high commitment to pushing out what should have been in at the start and providing quality content updates. it is a great game (if you like that kind of thing ofc).

WoW was also great game. however now i tend to refer to it as "an online theme park based on its former self.". seriously. factional heros and major villains have become mascots that everyone gets to their picture taken with...

Tor has the story going for it, but in every other department it is greatly lacking.

I did not like what little I played of WoW and I was not gong to try TOR but well Lightsabers, so I did and I enjoy it. That being said it is not the best game in the world and honestly I am playing it like a singe player RPG with multiplayer elements. I have done little PvP and very few Flashpoints/Heroics (group quests) and once I have finished the storys for my 3 remaining Republic characters I will cancel my subscription.

I tried to play Sith and while being on Korriban was ok as I was being an evil prick to other evil pricks I just felt bad after killing my first Jedi (a teenage padawan no less) so I stopped. I just cannot be the bad guy in games.

TOR's combat is sticky and unpolished. WoW still has the most fluid combat out of every hotkey MMO on the market. WoW's background lore is better, though its story-telling is terrible.

TOR was an unmitigated pile of shit. WoW, while better per se, became so watered down who cares? Guild Wars 2 soon baby...

Is TOR a step up from WoW? yes. Not a very big step, mind, (not nearly big enough, in my opinion) but it is a step.

TOR incorporates major advances in storytelling, and gives far greater focus on the so-called "fourth pillar" of game design. Its main problem (continuing to beat the dead horse) was failing to improve the other three pillars (combat, progression, and exploration, if I remember correctly) established by WoW, who has improved upon them (albeit only slightly) since. TOR still has a lot of potential with the IP, and if they can pull off some of the tricks Trion did with Rift to maintain the game's relevance, it could still be quite entertaining.

For what some bigger steps look like, check out (in order of availability): Rift, TERA, The Secret World, and Guild Wars 2.

WoW is no longer good. The old WoW (Pre-WotLK) was better than TOR and TOR isn't good.

New WoW and TOR are both as bad as each other, there are no longer good MMORPG's. I'd rather play Runescape, and I don't want to do that either.

Penny Arcade did this comic strip that pretty much sums up what is wrong with the MMO genre

They're not try enough new things to stay interesting.

TOR is a step up, however, I have problems with Revan and some of the storytelling.

On another note, TOR has THE WORST use of slow motion in cutscenes ever! The opening cutscene has Satele jumping on a spaceship in slow motion. I wanted to facepalm with my computer.

Finally, Guild Wars 2 will just be better.

It's WoW with lightsabers. Automatically better.

For me the story in SWTOR is so much better than WoW. But otherwise the games are very comparable.

no, not really

ToR = WoW in terms of game play and loot

only thing ToR has is a (shitty) Story, in which your 'actions are supposed to matter' but don't, not when my Light Side Sith (pure blood no less) doesn't even raise an eyebrow in 30 ish levels of play, save for 1 line -.-

choices aside though, the story's aren't that interesting. City of Heroes, an MMO that's about as old as WoW btw, may not be stacked front to back with 'killer writing' (it is an 8 year old MMO after all) but they have been going out of they're way to ADD good story arcs since about I17 for sure, or just well written one shot missions (like pretty much every villain to rouge, and rouge to hero mission) that do the one thing ToR fails to do, make my character matter.

>.> not that I'm biased toward CoH or anything *hides the slip saying i've been playing it for 6 years* but 'not mattering' in the game world is a big issue for me, doesn't matter how many others are running that particular mission so long as the mission it self is written in such away as to make me feel like my character is needed, or that my actions have had some effect on something (like a Vigilantly to Villain mission i did)

I voted other, but that's because my wording and sentiment is different than the options.

I think TOR is much better than WoW on account of the ability to roleplay. One thing that's frustrated me about WoW and most MMOs is that you have no reason to roleplay. I love to create characters and determine how they would react to certain situations, but you can't do that with WoW unless you can find others to do it with. Even then, most people who roleplay write out whole damn paragraphs riddled with cliches in a description box that's supposed to be used for first impressions.

I keep hearing complaints of various kinds about TOR, and I think there's ultimately one solution: Bioware needs to re-release it with single player and limited multiplayer modes. What ruins TOR for me is putting up with other people. Whether they're running around with names like "XxDarkVadorrrrxX" or bitching about how imbalanced PvP is, I hate playing the game with other people.

Now, there are people I know who I'd like to play it with, but that's not the same as playing a Massively Multiplayer game with the drooling, infectious mass that is People.

TOR did somethings really better than WoW, and it did some things astronomically worse than WoW.
At the end of the day I think it pretty much evens out and boils down to personal taste, but I think WoW comes out just slightly ahead because it's been out for longer and just has "more" stuff to keep you occupied.

WoW is significantly deeper, more polished, has vastly more content on offer, and is mechanically more sound. TOR has voice acting. That's not a small thing either, it was actually a fairly major feature...but the game was dragged down by a host of game play and content issues.

WoW is not my favorite MMO of all time, but it is the most "complete" MMO on the market. The most feature rich, and the most fastidiously play balanced.

I played World of Warcraft from the week it launched up until about a week after my guild had the Firelands raid in Cataclysm on farm status. I left the game because I was tired of organizing raid teams, I was tired of Blizzard meddling with class balance, I was tired of the community's behavior, and the more I read about Mists of Pandaria the more pessimistic I got about the future of the game. Enough was enough.

I switched over to The Old Republic with a few other members of my raiding guild who needed a break from WoW.

No. ToR was no better than WoW. It made some minor improvements here and there, but it was pretty much the same damn game with a different coat of paint. The storylines for each of the character classes and the conversations, while fairly simple and lacking in depth, were interesting for a little while... especially when done cooperatively where you've got three friends roleplaying pure Light Side characters, and the forth player is roleplaying a complete asshole pure Dark Side character. But while the story/dialogue can be interesting for a while, it's not really enough to save the game for me. I did end up eventually quitting after a couple months, because I was tired of classes and abilities getting nerfed into the goddamn ground for the sake of PvP "balance." Frankly, over-tuned class/ability nerfs that gut playstyles for the sake of PvP irritates the hell out of me, and seems to be the fastest way to make me completely resentful toward a game and its development team. The same shit happened with pretty much every other new MMO I tried.

I think the OP seems a tad biased towards ToR in his assessment. I've been playing wow since about 6 months after launch and have never been frustrated with the development of the game. Everyone has their opinion and that's great, but there is a large amount of whining and entitlement from the community, which I believe is mostly a vocal minority, but again, that's just my observation.

Point is, the game has evolved as the playerbase has grown and changed. Those changes are going to be good for some and not for others.

As far as ToR, the game was a wow clone, as far as I could tell in the early levelling experience. The only significant things it brought to the table were taken from Mass Effect and didn't really add much to the overall experience. The voice acting was great. However the conversation wheels and binary moral choice system has always been a negative to me, so I don't think it represented much of a step up at all.

TOR was more of a lateral move than a step back or forward, at least in terms of game play.
By virtue of being a Star Wars franchise and therefore being limited in the scope of what story they can tell...I give the win to WoW.

I've been a WoW subscriber since before Burning Crusade and although the game is certainly showing it's age I still think it's an enjoyable game and still remains the only MMO I've played that I can still enjoy.

I really liked the added element of story telling in ToR which was missing from WoW. Still, I prefer single player and coop rpgs / games (ala Mass Effect 3 / Borderlands). The MMO genre has gotten old fast. I tried WoW off and on with friends for a long time. No plans to ever return at this point thou.